Bump in the Night
by ProbableImpossibilities
Summary: A five-year-old Troy is convinced there's a booger-monster under his bed, and it's up to his cranky and parenting-awkward father to convince him otherwise. It's based off of Sons of Van Hellsing, so don't get confused if you didn't read it. Please review!


Seras woke up to someone screaming bloody murder.

It was Troy, her five-year-old son, who was in the next room screaming, "Dad! DaaaaAAAAAAaaaaad! DADDY!" She turned on a small lamp and glanced over at her alarm clock, barely able to see anything from exhaustion.

It was two o'clock in the morning.

"Uuhh..." she groaned, and flopped her face into her pillow. Why did all these kinds of emergencies always have to come up at night? At least she didn't have to actually try and deal with it this time. Without lifting her head, she nudged her husband, who somehow snored in blissful ignorance of the racket being raised by their child. After a light shaking of his shoulders, he still refused to get up, so she lifted up her fist and brought it down as hard as she could on the center of his back.

Needless to say, that woke him up quite nicely.

John rolled out of bed and fell onto the floor with a thump. Using the headboard for support, he managed to lift himself up to a standing position, after which he rubbed his eyes and yawned. "What time is it?" he asked drowsily. Seras simply pointed at the alarm clock, her head still buried in her pillow. He saw the time, and blanched. "It is far too early for this..." he mumbled, eyelids only half-open. "I have a meeting tomorrow."

"So?" Seras' voice was muffled by the pillow, but John could tell she wasn't going to let him win this one. Still, he had to try. "He's your kid, you know..." he muttered, and yawned again. Seras lifted her head off the pillow to glare at him. "I take care of him all day, every day," she said. "I wasted nine months of my life just to give birth to that thing, and I'm still paying for it. From midnight until sunrise, he's your kid!" And with that, she flopped back onto the pillow and refused to say another word. John knew when he was beaten, so he sighed and shuffled out of the room, into the hallway, and into Troy's room.

He turned on the light, and saw Troy huddled in a corner of his bed, shaking like a leaf. "Dad," he whispered. "There's a booger-monster under my bed!"

"A what?" John asked. "You mean the boogie-man?"

"No, a booger-monster! He's big, green, and slimy, and he lives under my bed! His name's Sebastian."

John sighed, and bent down to look under the bed. He stood up and looked Troy in the eye. "There is no monster," he said. "Now go to sleep."

"There is too a monster!" Troy pouted. "I saw him! His name's Sebastian."

"I didn't see him when I looked under the bed."

"He was hiding from you."

John groaned and held his forehead in his hand. "Listen, if there was a monster under your bed, I would have found him by now, hiding or not. Now, let me get some sleep." He turned and walked towards the hallway. As soon as he turned off the light, Troy screamed, "DAD! DAAAAAAAAD!"

He turned the light back on. "I'm right here! What do you want?"

Troy looked back at him with big, blue, puppy-eyes. "Can I sleep in your bed?" he asked. "The booger-monster's still here."

Puppy-eyes had never worked on John. "No, you can't sleep in our bed, you have to sleep in your own bed. I will say it again, there is no boogie-monster!"

"Boog**er**-monster. His name's Sebastian."

"I know his name's Sebastian!" John rubbed his temples. It was clear he wasn't getting through to Troy, and another, more subtle approach was needed. He bent down next to Troy until he was at eye-level with his son. "You see, you can't sleep in our bed because... there's a, umm..." He struggled to come up with a good enough reason for the five-year-old. "...there's a booger-monster in our bed, too." Troy gasped. "There's a booger-monster in your bed? I thought under the bed was bad enough! Is it hard to sleep?"

"Yes. It has feet that are cold as ice, it snores- er, _growls viciously_ through all hours of the night, and it pushes me out of the bed and keeps all the sheets for itself. It gets angry if you wake it up, so you have to be quiet and go to sleep now, okay?"

"Okay." Troy looked up at him. "Daddy, since my booger-monster's name is Sebastian, what's your booger-monster's name?"

"Seras."

Troy's eyes widened. "That's Mommy's name!"

"That it is," John mumbled. "What a coincidence..."

"I've got to warn Mommy that a booger-monster's using her name!" Troy said frantically. He started screaming at the top of his lungs. "MOM! MOM! THERE'S A BOOGER-MONSTER IN YOUR BED! MOM!"

John rushed to quiet him down. "Don't scream, don't scream, Mommy's fine, now just shush and go back to sleep, okay?"

"MOM! MOM! MO-rrm!"

John had cupped his hand over Troy's mouth. "Stop screaming!" he growled. "The noise ordinance started at ten, and I don't need the police showing up at my house at two in the morning!" Troy nodded, and John released his mouth. "What's a noise ordin- ordina- ordi – that thing?" Troy asked, struggling to pronounce the word that was so obviously beyond his vocabulary. John sighed. "Never mind. Go. To. SLEEP."

"Okay." Troy got back under the sheets, and John turned off the light. "Good night," he said, and started walking back to his room.

"DAD!"

John rushed back into Troy's room and turned the light on again. "WHAT?" he snapped.

"Sebastian says he wants to eat me with ranch dressing and Tabasco."

John gritted his teeth. "He doesn't want to eat you, okay? He was just joking. Now, for the last time, go to bed!"

"Yeah, I figured he was joking," Troy replied. "I told him mixing ranch dressing and Tabasco was stupid. But he wanted me to ask you if it was or not. He said you eat like a raccoon."

"Sebastian doesn't know what he's talking about. Now tell Sebastian to shut up, or I'll eat him with ranch dressing and Tabasco! He's impeding my marginally healthy amount of sleep."

Troy whispered something to the underside of his bed, listened and nodded for a few seconds, then sat back up. John was considering getting the kid checked for mental illness.

"Sebastian says you wouldn't eat him. He also says you don't like Tabasco. I didn't know that you don't like Tabasco, Daddy!"

That caught John's attention. Troy _hadn't_ known that he didn't like Tabasco. He dropped to the floor, reached under the bed, and grasped something plasma-like. He scooted himself under the bed to look at it, and realized he was holding one of his familiars. _Play_, it whispered as it wriggled around in his grasp, formless and jelly-like. _Play with boy_. "Go away," he commanded it softly. "I'm not your master anymore." He released it, and the familiar dissipated into thin air. _Well,_ he thought. _There __was__ a monster, after all_. He scooted out from under the bed and stood up, dusting himself off.

"Is it gone?" Troy asked. John nodded. "It's gone, and it won't bother you again." He sat down on the bed next to Troy. There was something he felt the need to say to his son. "Troy," he said. "There are always going to be monsters. Some of them will hide under your bed, and some of them won't. Some of them won't be harmless monsters like Sebastian, either, and they'll try to hurt you. But I promise, I won't let any of them touch you. I will always be here to fight them off, no matter how big or scary they are. So believe me when I say, there is no monster under your bed that I can't handle. Now, go to bed."

Troy smiled, and nestled under the sheets. John got up and turned off the light.

"Daddy?"

John groaned. "Yes?"

"I love you."

"Good night." John went back to his room and crawled back into bed next to Seras, who was half-asleep. "Did you tell him you love him back?" she mumbled. John didn't answer. He just stared at the dark ceiling for a while. Finally, he whispered, "I didn't say it. But I thought it. Does that count?"

"No."

"Oh." John turned onto his side. "Good night." And he slowly drifted off into the blessed release of a booger-monster-free sleep.


End file.
